Боргуль Н. М. Пособие по основам теории изучаемого языка, печать
§ 2. Scandinavian influence on the English language
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| § 2. Scandinavian influence on the English language
The Scandinavian Conquest had a great effect on the English language. The Scandinavian dialects spoken by the invaders belonged to the North Germanic languages and their phonetic and grammatical structures were similar to those of Old English. Close relationship between English and Scandinavian dialects made mutual understanding without translation quite possible. Due to the contacts and mixture with Scandinavian, the Old English language acquired numerous Scandinavian features. The result was a blending of Scandinavian and English dialects, especially in the North and East. Scandinavian influence was felt both in vocabulary and morphology. Scandinavian borrowings cannot be referred to any definite semantic groups though all of them denote things used in every-day life. Among Scandinavian borrowings we find such Modern English words as fellow, husband, wrong, to call, to take (Sc. feola ʒa, husbonda, wrang, kalla, taka), etc. Even the 3 rd person plural pronoun was taken over from Scandinavian into English. The Scandinavian pronoun ƥ eir penetrated into English and, superseding the OE pronoun hīe became ME they. In a similar way there appeared pronouns their and them . Scandinavian elements became part of many geographical names, e.g. –by ‗ village‘ in Kirkby, Appleby, Whitby, Derby; -toft ‗ grassy spot‘, ‗ hill‘ in Langtoft; - thorp ‗ village‘ in Woodthorp. The similarity of Old English and the language of the invaders makes it at times difficult to define a given word as a native one or borrowing. In certain cases, however, there are reliable criteria for recognizing a borrowed word, the principal ones are as follows: a) the development of the sound combination [ sk ]; 24 In Old English it was palatalized to ― sh ǁ [ ʃ ] (written ― sc ǁ ), while in the Scandinavian countries it retained its hard sk- sound. Consequently while native words like ship, fish, shine, shield, etc., have ― sh ǁ [ ʃ ] in Modern English, words borrowed from Scandinavians are generally still pronounced with [ sk ] : sky, skin, skill, scrape, whisk. Old English scyrte has become ― shirt ǁ , while the sounding alike Old Norse form skyrta turned into skirt. b) in the same way the retention of the hard pronunciation of ― k ǁ and ― g ǁ in such words as kid, dike, get, give, gild, egg, is an indication of Scandinavian origin. In the word ― gift ǁ not only the initial sound is due to Scandinavian, but also the modern meaning. The Old English word ― gift ǁ meant ― the price of a wife ǁ , and, hence, in the Plural it meant ― marriage ǁ , while the Scandinavian word had the more general sense of ― present ǁ . In some words the old native form has survived, but has adopted the Scandinavian meaning of the corresponding word. Thus ― dream ǁ in Old English meant ― joy ǁ , but in Middle English the modern meaning of dream was taken over from the Scandinavian ― draumr ǁ . Eventually the Scandinavians were absorbed into local population both ethnically and linguistically. They merged with the society around them, but the impact on the linguistic situation and on the further development of the English language was quite profound. жүктеу/скачать 0,78 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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